


things that didn't happen in endgame

by bereft_of_frogs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-05 17:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19045123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: Three things that didn't happen inEndgameOr: three fix-its





	things that didn't happen in endgame

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote and posted these to [tumblr as "things that probably won't happen in Endgame"](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/tagged/time-travel-shenanigans-that-are-almost-certainly-not-going-to-happen-in-endgame) in the week or so leading up to seeing the movie so at the time these were being written and originally posted, I had no idea what was going to happen! I decided to post these to Ao3 (with the slightly altered title), should anyone want to read them that's not on tumblr, and as a backup in case tumblr ever implodes. (Which seems likely.) 
> 
> Happy reading!

Part I:

 

They wait, watching carefully, until the purple light has entirely consumed the craft, blowing it into a million pieces. They wait, as the Guardians of the Galaxy pick up Thor’s unconscious body and fly off into the stars. Then they are alone, the Valkyrie holding the craft steady among the floating wreckage.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” She asks him as he dons the suit. “You know we might not be able-”

“Then if nothing else, I will have his body for a proper funeral. Not leave him to drift into the Void.” _Again_ , he thinks. That was part of the motivation for this request, to use the time stone to travel back to retrieve his brother’s body. The image of him floating into the stars, sucked into the Void, kept coming to him at night. He could not just leave Loki’s body to drift for eternity, alone and cold and always falling through the stars.

And there was, of course, also a minuscule chance they might be able to _save_ him. Thor had been resuscitated after all.

_But the crack in his neck, the bones breaking, his trachea crushed…can he really bring him back from all that?_

That was why they had borrowed the medical equipment, oxygen tanks and tubes and a collar to hold his neck in place.

He had to try.

The Valkyrie lines the ship up and he clips the tether to his belt. Then he takes a deep breath and opens the hull.

Loki’s body floats limp among the wreckage. Frost has touched the skin of his cheek, his hands. There’s a patch of blood on his shirt. Thor vaguely remembers spitting it up, in those last moments he held him.

Thor wraps his arms so, so carefully around Loki’s frozen, stiff body, holding him securely to his chest. Everything is perfectly still and silent in space. It’s something like peace. Then he hits the tether control on his belt and they’re pulled back into the ship.

The Valkyrie helps lower Loki’s limp body carefully to the floor once they’re past the airlock.

“Quickly,” Thor gasps.

“I know, I know.” She slides the tube they were given on Earth into his mouth. “Shit, this is hard.”

“Shuri and Bruce said-”

“I _know_.” She makes it work, the tube inflating and replacing the crushed flesh of his airway. She connects the stream of air and hits a button on the machine to set the rhythm.

Thor rips Loki’s shirt to the side to bare his chest. “Make sure you’re holding his head steady.”

“Thor, I know.”

Thor takes a deep breath and reaches for Loki’s chest.

He doesn’t know how long the pattern goes on for. Pounding on his chest, ribs splintering. Then a shock of lightning, driven through his heart. Check for a pulse. Again. Six shocks of lightning and Valkyrie’s starting to look at him with pity on her face.

“Just once more,” He gasps. Sweat is running down his back. “Once more.” He places his hands and lets the lightning come to him, with a prayer to the Norns. _Please let this work_.

This time when he lowers his ear to his brother’s chest, he feels the smallest beat against his head.

He sits up. “Val, check-“

Her fingers are already on Loki’s throat. Her eyes widen. “Wait, I feel…” Suddenly, Loki sucks in a shocked breath against the rhythm of the machine, his back violently arching. Thor catches his arms as they come up to grasp at his neck.

“Stay calm, it’s okay,” Thor says. Loki stills. He blinks bloodshot eyes open and they focus on Thor’s face. “You’re alright now.” He takes Loki’s wrists in one hand so he can run his fingers through his hair with the other. Tears fill Loki’s eyes and spill over. They run down his temples into his hair. He clutches at Thor desperately, making a quiet, distressed sound in his throat. His nails drag on Thor’s skin as he sobs - or as close to sobbing as he can, with the machine still breathing for him.

Even the Valkyrie’s eyes look suspiciously sparkling and she’s smiling widely, keeping one hand on the back of his head to try and keep him still.

“One more resurrection, I think. Right, brother?” Thor says with a watery smile. He wipes at the tears dripping back into Loki’s hair. “You’ll be alright now. I’ve got you.”

 

* * *

 

Part II:

 

It is the moment Thor has been waiting for, ever since they drafted this plan, been assigned their missions. They had sat in the Avengers Compound, in the present, and decided that Thor and Carol would be the ones to bring Loki to them and Thor’s pulse had picked up. Then they had travelled to the past, Thor growing more and more anxiously eager for this exact moment.

Loki stands in the tower, just seconds from emerging onto the landing pad, moments from another confrontation with a past version of his brother.

“Loki.” Instead, he turns at the sound of Thor’s voice, hollowed eyes narrowed at the interruption to his plans.

“Who are you?” He barks. Thor notes how harsh his voice is, how pale his skin is. His hair is brittle and limp, the bones in his cheek are sharp, accentuating the shadows under his eyes. How had he not seen it all before?

“You’re going to have to come with us,” Carol says, voice calm and authoritative. Her fists glow.

Loki’s brow furrows in anger, and he raises the scepter. “I ask again, _who are you?_ Answer swiftly, or I will have to-”

“Loki, do you not know me?” Thor asks him gently.

There’s a moment’s pause. A silence, in which Thor can see the wariness in Loki’s expression, the way his mind churns, working to place the unnerving familiarity of Thor’s much altered form. Loki’s eyes go comically wide when he puts it all together.

“ _Thor?_ ” He gasps. The scepter lowers. Loki doesn’t have time to further react before Thor sends a moderate shock of lightning through him. He allows the scepter to clatter to the floor but catches his brother before he can crumple, scooping him up. Loki’s weight settles into his arms, his head lolling onto his shoulder.

Carol snatches up the scepter. “Let’s go.” Thor doesn’t move. “We’ve got to meet Stark and find-”

“A moment,” Thor says. His voice is thick with emotion. “Just a moment.”

She tilts her head, watching him. “Thor?”

“I just…just give me a moment. Please.” He takes a stuttering breath. “I didn’t think…I’d get another chance…” He clutches the form in his arms tighter, looking down at him with grief plain on his face. Carol nods.

“Alright. Yeah. Take a sec.”

They carve out a moment’s peace in the middle of war.

 

* * *

 

Part III:

 

The portal shimmers in the inky darkness.

“We’re free, we’re going to be free. Shit,” Sam says, wonder in his voice.

“Wait for them to call us,” Strange tests the portal with a gesture. “It could still collapse.”

Loki hangs back, as the rest chatter in excitement and anticipation. Despite his magic being part of the key to their miraculous connection with the living world and their possible rescue from the Soul Stone, he does not feel the same joy as the others. No one notices, so he just watches quietly as the rest ready themselves for their resurrections.

Wanda lingers as well, still looking drawn and tired. She had been mourning the whole stretch of time Loki has known her and he understands her own grim mood - while he believes he will not be gifted a third chance at life, she feels she has nothing to return to.

He feels it before Strange announces it. The pulse of power that signals the portal is stable.

“It is time.” Strange clears his throat, straightens his cloak, and steps through the portal. A minute later, a hand clad in a fingerless glove reaches through the whirling black and purple light. Bucky Barnes takes it and is pulled back through to the world of the living. One by one, the hands of the living Avengers pull their comrades back through the portal, out of the cursed realm of the Soul Stone and back to the concrete reality of Earth.

Soon, the only ones left are T’Challa, Wanda, and Loki.

“Are you not coming?” T’Challa asks.

Wanda looks down. “I have nothing left there to return to. But I guess I cannot stay here either.” She steps through, helped down by hands Loki doesn’t recognize. T’Challa looks back at him expectantly.

Loki looks back with a steady, serious gaze. “I did not die as you did.” _The need for air, to breathe breathe breathe, a crushing pressure on his throat, legs kicking, a screaming over the roar in his ears, then blackness-_ “I am not certain I can be brought back. It seems likely that this place is my final fate. A fitting one, I’m sure some would say.” Alone. It’s what he deserves.

“Nonetheless,” T’Challa says. “I believe it is worth it to try.” And then he’s gone, leaving Loki alone. It’s silent inside of the Soul realm. Then a deeply familiar hand appears, open and welcoming.

For a second, Loki merely stares at it. He knows precisely how it will feel to wrap his fingers around that warm palm, lets himself imagine its touch for a moment. But he cannot allow himself to hope. More viscerally, he can imagine the feeling of his incorporeal hand passing straight through, condemning him to live here a phantom. He thinks he might implode with the disappointment of it all.

But it is worth it to try.

If his heart was still beating, it would be racing along by now. He steels himself against what’s sure to be the devastating dissolution of his last, meager hopes, and reaches out tentatively. His hand trembles. He stays hovering, for a moment, a breath above. Shaking, he brushes the palm with the tip of a finger, then moves to grasp the hand-

Thor’s hand is solid and warm beneath his.

He barely has time to grasp the significance before Thor pulls and he feels his form wrenched through the portal. It hurts, every nerve burning with the return to the living. For a horrifying second, he can’t breathe and he believes he is just being brought back to die again, but then he manages a shallow breath, and a deeper one. His throat aches terribly. A strong, solid arm wraps around his waist and pulls him the rest of the way through the portal, into streaming sunshine.

The world spins and tilts nauseatingly, then rights itself. He is on Earth, he is _alive_. And he is in Thor’s arms.

He still has not seen his brother, having been swept into an embrace the second he is free from the portal. But he knows him by touch alone, the feeling of Thor’s arm bracing his back, Thor’s hand covering the back of his head. They collapse to their knees, Thor’s face buried in his hair, gripping him so tightly Loki almost can’t breathe again. But Loki presses closer, still scarcely believing that he is solid, that he is _here_.

He lets Thor cry, desperately sobs of pure relief, kissing the side of his head over and over. His own tears spill over and he gathers the fabric of Thor’s cape in his fists. “You see?” His voice is rough and his breath hitches. “I told you. The sun is shining.”

**Author's Note:**

> Cool, I'll just be over here, forever crying over the line "The sun will shine on us again." Yup, heart? Broken. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Kudos/Comments/Shares always appreciated! 
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr @bereft-of-frogs](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/) for writing progress, more crying, and further shenanigans.


End file.
